Malindi Museum

Malindi Museum is the National Museums of Kenya station on the Malindi seafront, and it is two buildings rather than one. The name usually refers to the House of Columns near the jetty, opened as the town’s first museum in 2004. The station also runs the Malindi Heritage Complex a short distance away, along with the Vasco da Gama Pillar and the Portuguese Chapel.

That is worth knowing before arriving, because a visitor who walks to one and leaves has seen about half of it.

The House of Columns

The seafront building takes its name from the thick columns across its front that carry the upper floors. The National Museums of Kenya says the date of construction is not known. What is documented is that it was in use by Adulhussein Gulamhussein and Company, and that it existed by 1891: W. Fitzgerald photographed it that year from the deck of the Imperial British East Africa Company’s coasting steamer, the Henry Wright, while surveying the agricultural potential of the Kenya coast.

Its later career is a compressed history of how this coast was administered. It became Malindi’s first hospital, and older residents still describe being treated in the small rooms on the first floor. When Malindi District Hospital was built in 1952 the building was taken over as the town’s first fisheries office. It then housed the Game Department, and after that the Wildlife Conservation and Management Department. When Kenya Wildlife Service was formed and consolidated its Malindi offices at Casuarina Point, livestock officers held the ground floor until the building was handed over to the National Museums of Kenya.

It opened as a museum on 10 May 2004, with exhibition space on the ground floor and the Webb Memorial Library and Resource Centre upstairs. Displays are changed rather than fixed, and a coelacanth specimen associated with Malindi has been among the better-known things shown here.

The Malindi Heritage Complex

The second building was constructed in the early 1890s for the Imperial British East Africa Company, which held the Sultan of Zanzibar’s mainland concession from Kipini to Vanga for fifty years under royal charter. Built as the District Collector’s Office, it was the company’s first office in the town, and it was known locally as the Boma, or Kwa Balozi, the Consul’s House. Offices occupied the ground floor and the District Collector lived upstairs.

Its construction was overseen by Bell Smith, an employee of the company, who died on 1 September 1894 and is buried in the graveyard of the Portuguese Chapel; the two sites are directly connected by that one fact.

The complex included a garage, the District Officer’s cottage, four cannons, three iron and one bronze, a bronze bell that marked office hours, and a monument to Prince Henry the Navigator erected in 1961. The bronze cannon was fired to open the Malindi Festival each year.

Administration continued through independence. In 1963 the British-appointed District Officer was replaced by the first Kenyan holder of the post, Sheikh Azzan Bin Rashid, formerly the Sultan of Zanzibar’s Liwali. When Malindi was raised from a sub-district of Kilifi to a full district in November 1966, the building became the office of the first Malindi District Commissioner, Clare Omollo.

The building was gazetted as a National Monument in 1991. The District Commissioner and staff moved to new offices in July 2012, the National Museums rehabilitated it, and it opened to the public on 24 December 2013.

What Is Inside

The Heritage Complex carries the interpretive load. Its large upper rooms hold exhibitions on the Mijikenda and on the Taita and Dawida peoples. The ground floor covers Swahili culture and Kenya’s underwater cultural heritage, which on a coast with five centuries of wrecks and drowned harbours is a richer subject than it sounds. Between them the two buildings answer the question most visitors arrive with: how a Swahili port, an Indian trading community, a Portuguese garrison, a British chartered company and a colonial district administration all ended up in the same few hundred metres of seafront.

Visiting Malindi Museum

Both buildings are on or near the sea promenade in central Malindi, an easy walk from each other and from the pillar and the chapel. Doing all four on foot in one morning is the best way to use them.

Admission is set by the National Museums of Kenya under the National Museums and Heritage (Admissions Fees) Regulations 2025, Legal Notice No. 79 of 2025, with revised rates effective 7 May 2026. Malindi sits in the standard heritage band: KSh 200 for a Kenya and East African citizen adult and KSh 100 for a child, USD 6 and USD 3 for residents and visitors from the rest of Africa, USD 8 and USD 4 for visitors from outside Africa. Checked on 21 September 2026.

Ticketing across National Museums sites is eCitizen only, through the NMK payment portal, and cash is not taken at the desk. Arrange payment before arriving, particularly if travelling in from outside Kilifi County. The notice gives 08:30 to 17:30, Monday to Sunday including public holidays, as a general rule across National Museums facilities; the Malindi pages publish no hours of their own, and elsewhere in the estate individual site pages depart from that rule, so confirm before travelling. The notice also names Malindi as a single entry and does not price the pillar and the chapel separately, so ask at the desk how the four sites are ticketed together.

Allow an hour for both museum buildings, or half a morning for the full set of four sites.

Go here first rather than last. The pillar and the chapel are small, and they make considerably more sense after the exhibitions than before them. For the wider coastal context, see Swahili cultural experiences and the heritage tours guide.

Questions Travellers Ask About Malindi Museum